Abstract
IN this volume Mr. Hilton-Simpson describes the medical and surgical methods of the Shawía of the Aurès Massif of Algeria. His record is the result of careful inquiry pursued in the course of a number of visits to the country, and possesses a peculiar value in that it deals with practices which must inevitably disappear before the advance of civilisation. Although i some of the treatment prescribed by Shawía medicine is derived “from the sorcerer's defensive armour against Jenun,” the demons or spirits which cause disease, medical practice is not here synonymous with magic, as among most primitive peoples. The medical; practitioner is regularly apprenticed, usually to a member of his own family. The medical treatment would appear to be derived from the medicine of the medieval Arabs. The origin of their surgery is more obscure, and it has been suggested, on account of the primitive character of their instruments and the ] prevalence of the operation for trepanning, in which; they take much pride and show much skill, that it may? possibly go back so far as the Neolithic age. The? trepanning operation is usually successful, a fact which: is due perhaps as much to the remarkable vitality of the people as to the skill of the surgeon.
Arab Medicine and Surgery: A Study of the Healing Art in Algeria.
M. W.
Hilton-Simpson
By. Pp. viii + 96 + 8 plates. (London: Oxford University Press, 1922.) 10s. 6d. net.
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Arab Medicine and Surgery: A Study of the Healing Art in Algeria . Nature 111, 112 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111112b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111112b0